Cliches often come into existence through the sheer force of being repeatedly true. "The book is better than the movie." Forget what's better, my wife and I were talking about how often book derived films are just bad.

What are the exceptions? I know there are many.

Rumble Fish
The Godfather

Fat City
Wise Blood
Dr. Strangelove
Jaws

This could go on and on.

No Country For Old Men. And I liked the book.

The Sweet Hereafter

With incredibly rare exceptions, nobody cares about the novels Hitchcock adapted. A lot of classic noirs and westerns were adapted from completely forgotten trash.

While I’ve never read Election, I have read other books by Tom Perrotta and have no trouble believing that the movie solidly beats the novel.

The In Cold Blood movie isn’t great, but it’s decent, and that makes it fifty times better than the corny, overpraised piece of shit Truman Capote wrote. (God, I fucking hate that book.)

The Exorcist is better than the novel, although I totally enjoyed the novel too.

Kubrick, maybe, belongs here? Maybe the Bond films do too, though I’ve never read the Ian Fleming novels.

I kind of preferred Malcolm X to The Autobiography, but that’s more a personal preference.

Cabaret is one of my all-time favorite movies, but I can’t measure them against the Christopher Isherwood source stories, as I’ve never read them.

tallchris wrote: Sat Oct 08, 2022 9:49 am The Sweet Hereafter

Yes! Such a good film. This is the second time in a fortnight someone has mentioned it - must rewatch soon.

I dunno if it's better as such, but "Apocalypse Now" is an adaptation of a book that is considerably different (setting, action, tone) whilst managing to enhance both tellings, by underlining that the economic colonial exploitation of "Heart Of Darkness" was war and the war in "AC" was in many ways colonial exploitation.

Wood Goblin wrote: Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:00 am
While I’ve never read Election, I have read other books by Tom Perrotta and have no trouble believing that the movie solidly beats the novel.

Is "The Leftovers" one of the ones you've read? I haven't read it, but I thought the three season TV show based on it was really really good.

Dudley wrote: Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:04 am

Wood Goblin wrote: Sat Oct 08, 2022 10:00 am
While I’ve never read Election, I have read other books by Tom Perrotta and have no trouble believing that the movie solidly beats the novel.

Is "The Leftovers" one of the ones you've read? I haven't read it, but I thought the three season TV show based on it was really really good.

Little Children was the one I read. I’ve heard the same thing about The Leftovers show!

I forgot a big one: Greed. Last year, I watched Irving Thalberg’s cut of the movie, and I read the Frank Norris novel McTeague to see what Thalberg chopped from von Stroheim’s eight-hour cut. The answer is that Thalberg cut a LOT of garbage. The novel, frankly, sucked. If von Stroheim had truly filmed the entire novel, then Thalberg might have done cinema a favor. Much of the novel concerns extremely tedious subplots, one of which is horribly anti-Semitic.

Okay, I’ll bite…

A glaring example of a movie being superior in every way to a book would be Bresson’s final film, L’argent, based on Tolstoy’s The Forged Coupon. The latter, a novella, lacks the magic, rigor, and forward momentum of the former. It’s not an arduous read, but the translation I read, at least, is slight, whereas I would count the film as one of the most accomplished things someone has made while an octogenarian. Haven’t read the source material of A Gentle Woman, Four Nights of a Dreamer, Diary of a Country Priest, Mouchette, or A Man Escaped, but those are all certified bangers as well.

If we can include TV shows here, the three seasons of Mr. Mercedes, based on Stephen King’s Bill Hodges Trilogy, are a curious example. Because . . . the first season, based on the first book, is comparable, or about as good of a match as one could probably muster for TV. It doesn’t include the horribly racist/sexist/homophobic internal monologues of the antagonist (for obvious reasons), so it’s somewhat less gritty/alarming, but the plotting is good and the characterization is mostly congruent with the book (the characters look and behave much as how you’d imagine they would while reading it). The second season, based on the third book (End of Watch), though, represents quite a drop from the source material, in my view. The "cat and mouse" isn’t as taught, the conclusion isn’t nearly as pulse-pounding and electrifying, and overall, it’s just not set up as well. After finishing it for the first time, it seemed to me the third season, based on the second book (Finders Keepers), would follow suit, but as something of a curveball, it’s actually better than the book! Has cameos from Bruce Dern as the shady/cranky old author, and they inserted a new character, a sociopathic “battle ax” of sorts who seduces the loser dirtbag antagonist and lets loose a lot of funny one-liners. What’s more, a lot of what did work with the book is conveyed well in the show, including a scary climax you wouldn’t think they’d be able to pull off for mid-budget TV.

The David Simon book that Homicide: Life on the Street was based on is very good, but there are points where I think the show exceeds it. Yeah, sometimes there are less than stellar musical choices (just watch the show, and you’ll know what I mean). And yeah, it can wear its morality on its sleeve a bit much during contentious episodes, and entertain distracting subplots that aren’t so fruitful. But the interplay between the more headstrong detectives can be cooler and more developed than in the book, often extending through multiple episodes, over which personal quirks of the characters and the actors playing them become more apparent. Some A-level banter there from the show’s writers.

Can’t say this conclusively, as I didn’t finish it, but as much as I admire some of Philip K. Dick’s work, I think the film Total Recall is a good deal more engrossing than what I read of We Can Remember It for you Wholesale.

Bruno Schulz’s story The Street of Crocodiles is strong, but I think the Brothers Quay film takes it to another level. Just some really earthy, elegant depictions of disrepair, very eastern European in scope, that have been referenced in a number of films since, even showing up in pop culture. And the overall rhythm between gestures and scenes is air tight, like a post-apocalyptic ballet.


Without stewing on it for a hours (I do have some things to do), here are some films I’ve seen, based on books/stories/writing that I haven’t read, that I consider, at the very least, fine watches . . . someone else would have to duck in and say how they stack up again the source material . . .

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
The Man Who Sleeps (1974)
Seconds (1966)
The Emigrants (1971) and The New Land (1972)
Dragon’s Return (1968)
David Golder (1931)
The Hustler (1961)
Come and See (1985)
The Intruder (2004)
Jerichow (2008)
The Human Condition (1959-1961)
The Breaking Point (1950)
The Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick (1972)
Stalker (1979)

. . . basically a lot of the same old titles I’ve been banging on about for a while, like a broken record. There are plenty of others.

A Simple Plan

Underrated film, directed by Sam Raimi, screenplay by the same guy who wrote the book.